


Autumn Dreaming :: Poor Men Would Ride

by Nell65



Series: Autumn Dreams [9]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Universe, F/M, Horses, post season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-12
Updated: 2015-09-12
Packaged: 2018-04-20 09:32:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,024
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4782443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nell65/pseuds/Nell65
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>New world, new skills.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Autumn Dreaming :: Poor Men Would Ride

“Why can’t we walk?” Bellamy asked again. Or, possibly, whined. “I like walking.”

“Because,” Echo answered, with the weary air of someone who’d already answered the same question a hundred times or more. Which, to be fair, she had. “Horses are faster and more comfortable.”

“You have very strange notions about what’s comfortable, babe.”

“If you would push your heels back down and get your tailbone underneath you, so you aren’t crushing your bits into your saddle, you would be,” she shrugged, indicating that it was all the same to her if he didn’t, “in less discomfort.”

“I think riding is great,” Octavia offered, from the other side of the paddock where she sat elegantly astride her own horse. She’d taken to riding as effortlessly as she had everything else Earth had thrown at her. Bellamy thought he might hate her, just a little, for that. 

“I think I’m in love with Big Red here.” Octavia leaned down and wrapped her arms around her mount’s thick neck.

“You know there’s reams of psychological theory about girls and their psycho-sexual hangups with horses, right? Big strong animals between their legs, control issues, being on top …,” he trailed off in the face of twin glares. He fake shivered, “Ow. I think my blood just froze up.”

“We leave for the Queen’s house in two days, Bellamy Blake,” Echo said, “If you are crippled when we get there, it will be no one’s fault but your own.”

“Right,” Bellamy sighed, then tried to re-arrange himself on the horse the way Echo suggested. He wished Lincoln were teaching them, or Matyn, or really any of the other grounders who hung around the Mountain or Camp Jaha these days. But they’d all insisted that the Ice Nation produced the best horses and the best riders, and that Echo was recognized as highly skilled even among her own people. 

Which did not, from Bellamy’s perspective, translate into her being a very good teacher. At all. Mostly she snapped impatiently at him. The only times she softened were when she was talking to his horse. That was when he caught glimpses of the woman he knew in the darkest watches of the night. The one who woke up crying out for her mother. Or fighting for her life, striking out in rage and pain. The one who woke him out of his nightmares of blood and bone, burned flesh and scalding steam. Soothed him and stroked his hair and kissed his brow and promised him over and over that the mountain men were gone. That they couldn’t hurt anyone else, ever again. Held him when he cried for the children he hadn’t been able to save. Melted around him when he brought her to climax, again and again in their frantic quest for exhausted sleep too deep for dreams.

He frowned down at the coarse mane of the horse he was riding. Buddy or Butty or Bunny, sometimes he really couldn’t tell one hard consonant from another in Trigedasleng. If the stupid beasts could bring out the softer side of even a prickly bitch like Echo, maybe there was something he was still missing.

Lexa had agreed to let them pass through her clan lands to the borders of the Ice Nation. From there they hoped that with Echo and Matyn’s help, they could secure safe passage to the bunker where Murphy was holed up. They were trying to avoid the wastelands of what had once been eastern New York state. According to Murphy’s first hand account and the Grounders’ more general knowledge, the wastes were treacherous in the extreme. On horseback, they would make good time on the longer, safer route, and perhaps, strengthen a few temporary alliances on the way.

Or at least learn a few things. 

War was coming. 

If not this spring, then the next. Without the heavy hand of the Mountain Men keeping them all in check, the clans were itching to try their strength against each other, settle old grievances, gain new advantage. Lexa was working like mad to avoid that outcome, but unfortunately her influence had been severely curtailed by her failure to seize the Mountain for her alliance when she had the chance. And if she worked too closely now with the Arkers, she risked being seen as a puppet rather than her own woman. 

Whether they wanted it or not, Kane and Abby and the rest of the council believed that the Arkers would be drawn in when it came to actual fighting. They just didn’t know on whose side. Assuming they got to choose. Bellamy and Lincoln agreed with their assessment.

If they were all still alive come spring, that is. Murphy’s intel might change everything. Up on the Ark, they had always attributed the cataclysm – the war, Armageddon – to a combination of human stupidity and the unforgiving logic of computerized defense systems.

If Murphy was right, they had it backwards. Sort of. The computerized defense systems, and their unforgiving logic, may have decided that humans and their stupidity were the problem and proactively struck in order eliminate them. Murphy thought it was possible, given some of the things he’d seen, that the system was – at least partially – still on line. That if humans got too successful, the system might strike at them again. Which is why, after thinking about it for a while, he’d actually reached out, wanting to warn them. He was a vicious little shit, in Bellamy’s not-at-all-privately-held view, but he wasn’t actually a psychopath. Just deeply self-interested and profoundly untrusting. Despite it all, though, he still clung to notions of justice, fairness, and a form of human empathy. He really didn’t want to be the last man standing.

So they were going to get him, him and his information. Bellamy was leading the team. Which is why he was here in this stupid paddock on this stupid horse trying to improve his riding skills. It wasn’t very leaderly to be bouncing around painfully and swearing a lot.

“Heels down, Bellamy! And how many times have I explained? Use your legs, not your hands to direct your mount!”


End file.
